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One of Laura's hands instinctively began to arrange her hair, but the other remained upon the book. "Who is it calling?" "Richard Lindley and that Wade Trumble." Laura rose, standing between her brother and the table. "Tell mother I will come down." Hedrick moved a little nearer, whereupon, observing his eye, she put her right hand behind her upon the book.
Here some apparent remonstrance was met with from both subjects, though amicably overcome by the Professor first manipulating the stolid brow and pallid front of the imperturbable Sweeney after which the same mysterious ordeal was loathfully submitted to by Hedrick though a noticeably longer time was consumed in securing his final loss of self-control.
That is why the fellows around town who hate Hedrick call him the rattlesnake, and those who admire him call him the Wrath of God. When he put up the telephone receiver he reached for his hat and bolted from the office under a full head of steam.
But there is no sound where there is no ear to hear, and no repartee, alas! when the wretch who said the first part has gone, so that Cora remained unscathed as from his alley solitude Hedrick hurled in the teeth of the rising moon these bitter words: "Oh, no; our cat only eats soft meat!"
"Give me a little time, old dear: I may decide to take him yet!" It was Mrs. Madison who informed the waiting Richard that Cora was unable to see him, because she was "lying down"; and the young man, after properly inquiring about Mr. Madison, went blankly forth. Hedrick was stalking the front yard, mounted at a great height upon a pair of stilts.
His mother, however, discovered something else, and, opening the kitchen window, she asked, with surprise: "Why, Hedrick, what on earth are you doing here?" "Me?" inquired Hedrick. "What are you doing here?" "Here?" Evidently she puzzled him. She became emphatic. "I want to know what you are doing." "Just standing here," he explained in a meek, grieved way. "But why aren't you at school?"
"Kiss me some more, darling little boy!" said Lolita. The strange boy squawked, wailed, screamed with laughter, howled the loving petition in a dozen keys of mockery, while Hedrick writhed and Lolita clung. Enriched by a new and great experience, the torturer trotted on, leaving viperish cachinnations in his wake. But the martyrdom was at an end.
Egerton used to be the neatest, best-mannered, best-dressed boy in town; but he looks and behaves like a Digger Indian since he's taken to following Hedrick around. Mrs. Villard says it's the greatest sorrow of her life, but she's quite powerless: the boy is Hedrick's slave. The other day she sent a servant after him, and just bringing him home nearly ruined her limousine.
Much of the talk about the alliance between Hedrick and Handy is, of course, down-right slander; every lawyer who tries lawsuits for forty years in a country town is bound to make enemies of small-minded people, many of whom occupy large places in the community, and a small-minded man, believing that his enemy is a villain, makes up his facts to suit his belief, and then peddles his story.
But Charley Hedrick only grinned when men talked to him of the rise of Handy, and replied to the complaints of the scrupulous that Ab was no worse than he had always been, and if he was making it pay better, no one was poorer for his prosperity but Ab himself, and added: "Certainly he is a sincere spender."
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